Scalp, hair found in bag in 2011 leads to homicide charges against 67-year-old woman

Updated Apr 30, 2019; Posted Apr 30, 2019

Virginia L. Hayden, 67, of Carlisle and formerly of Dover, has been charged with criminal homicide and numerous forgery-related charges in connection with the 2011 disappearance of her husband.
(York County Prison).

And today -- another two years later -- there has been an arrest in this nearly decade-long mystery involving forgery, tampering with records, conspiracy, and now, homicide.

Virginia L. Hayden, 67, of Carlisle and formerly of Dover, was arraigned Monday in York County on charges that include criminal homicide in the death of her husband, Thomas Hayden Sr., according to charging documents filed by the Northern York County Regional Police Department.

In those documents, filed by Lt. John Migatulski and Detective Michael Hine, police say the investigation unfolded like this:

Though the bag and its contents were discovered in 2012, it wasn’t until January 21, 2017 when the investigation became linked to Hayden. Kim Via, who lives in Louisiana, called the police that day in an effort to find her estranged father, Thomas Hayden, whom she had not seen or heard from in 11 years. She had tried several times to call her father, but when her stepmother, Virginia Hayden, answered the phone, she would say he did not wish to speak to her.

Police went to the Carlisle apartment where Via believed they lived. There, the apartment resident, Virginia Cooksey, said Virginia Hayden, her grandmother, had lived there, but Thomas Hayden never did.

Police then interviewed Virginia Hayden, who told them Thomas Hayden left back in 2011 seeking medical treatment for ALS. But during that interview, she gave two different accounts of his departure, prompting some suspicion with investigators. She indicated the last she heard from him was six years prior, calling from a blocked number. He was still receiving Social Security benefits deposited into a joint account, she said.

That same day, police visited the home on the 3000 block of Barley Circle, Dover Township, that was the last known address of Thomas Hayden. The homeowner said he bought the house from Virginia Hayden in November 2014, and at one point in their conversation, she told him her husband was dead.

A review of the deed showed Thomas Hayden sold his share of the property to Virginia Hayden a year prior in November 2013 for $1. The deed transfer also showed that Virginia Hayden’s daughter, Connie Pender, had notarized Thomas Hayden’s signature. An analysis would later show Thomas Hayden’s signature was forged and matched Virginia Hayden’s handwriting.

Police continued to investigate, interviewing Thomas Hayden’s two brothers, who provided their DNA samples, which were sent for testing, along with the contents of the FoodSaver bag discovered along the road five years prior. Those came back several months later as a matches likely originating from siblings.

Police also interviewed Carolyn Cooksey, another daughter of Virginia Hayden’s. She was under the impression that her mother traveled with Thomas Hayden to Mexico, seeking ALS treatment, and she received several phone calls from her mother in the fall of 2011, backing up that belief.

But she told investigators she remembers a Christmas party a month later when her mother showed up without her husband. She also recalled a strange conversation in which her mother discussed disposing of bodies and said pigs would eat an entire human, except for the skull. She also told police her mother had a FoodSaver sealer, the kind of bag the scalp, hair and sheets were found in.

She handed police a handwritten note she thought was from Thomas Hayden, imploring her to be there for her mother while he was gone. Like the deed to the house, a handwriting analysis showed the note was actually written by Virginia Hayden.

Investigators circled back a few weeks later to talk to Virginia Cooksey, the granddaughter of Virginia Hayden who lived in Carlisle. She recalled helping her grandmother move out of the apartment and opening a lockbox, in which she found Thomas Hayden’s driver’s license, passport and Social Security card, which she photographed with her phone and provided investigators.

Police conducted a records search, showing Thomas Hayden was still receiving Social Security deposits. Further interviews included neighbors, who believed Thomas Hayden had “up and disappeared,” as well as medical professionals, who said he had never been diagnosed with ALS and that he had just stopped coming to his appointments. They also found that Virginia Hayden had purchased a .357 handgun in the fall of 2011, around the time her husband disappeared.

After executing a search warrant on Virginia Hayden’s home in July 2017, finding the joint bank account, a FoodSaver system and the lock box containing his identification, police interviewed her again.

She maintained her husband had left for Mexico with his brother, who had denied this, and that he gave her the handwritten letters to give to the family.

But when confronted about the scalp in the bag, she agreed to give investigators a written confession, saying she would write “whatever you want me to write.” The investigators told her they wanted her to tell the truth, so she told them, “I admit to doing Carolyn and Kim, or Kim and Carolyn want me to admit to doing something to Thomas Hayden. I put Thomas Hayden in there. So be happy. I give in. So leave me alone. So there it is. That’s my confession.”

She indicated she was being made to say that to keep Thomas’ children happy.

When asked if she ever killed anything, she said she shot animals “on and off” when she used to hunt and she had animals on a farm at her sister-in-law’s place where they butchered hogs once per year.

And last year, in a forensic analysis of the evidence, it was determined that whether Thomas Hayden was alive or dead when his scalp cut off, it would have resulted in death.

“The task of dismemberment supports the conclusion that Thomas Hayden died a violent death at the hands of another individual,” Dr. Wayne K. Ross wrote in that analysis.

The amount of blood loss found on the items in the bag supports the conclusion there was a large wound or wounds consistent with blunt-force and sharp-force trauma or gunshot wounds or postmortem dismemberment, he wrote.

In addition to charges of criminal homicide, Virginia Hayden is also charged with 64 more counts that include forgery, conspiracy, theft, receiving stolen property and tampering with public records.

She is scheduled for a preliminary hearing at 1 p.m. May 30 before Magisterial District Judge David C. Eshbach.

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